Financial Needs Analysis
What is a Financial 360° Review?
A structured review of what you have, what you want, and what sits in between. Slightly less fun than the checkup, considerably more useful.
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Plain English
What is a financial needs analysis?
It is an organized review of your financial life in one sitting, instead of one product at a time. Nothing is bought, sold or recommended during the review itself.
Your Licensed Financial Professional walks through it with you using Finn's™ Fact Finder, our step-by-step review tool.
A typical analysis looks at your current income, savings, debt, protection, retirement assets, future goals, existing coverage, and the gaps between them.
Most people can name every account they own but have never seen those accounts described on a single page.
Why it matters
Owning financial products is not the same as having a plan.
Financial decisions usually get made one at a time and years apart: a workplace retirement account here, a policy through an employer there, a savings account opened for a reason nobody remembers.
Each piece may be reasonable on its own. The analysis asks a different question — do these pieces support the same goal, or are they quietly working against each other?
How the process works
Four steps, in order.
- 1Where you are today
Income, cash flow, savings, debt, retirement balances and any coverage already in place.
- 2What you want to accomplish
Retirement timing, family priorities, education goals, and the lifestyle those require.
- 3What gaps may exist
Where today's position and tomorrow's goal do not yet line up.
- 4What options may help
Educational discussion of approaches that may be relevant, in priority order.
What we look at
Seven areas, reviewed together.
What comes in, what goes out, and what is genuinely available to direct somewhere useful.
Money that can be reached quickly, so a surprise does not become a long-term setback.
Balances, interest rates and payoff timelines, and how they compete with saving.
What would happen to the plan if income stopped unexpectedly.
ProtectionCurrent and former employer accounts, personal accounts, and the income they may create.
Retirement planningHow your savings are taxed now and how withdrawals may be taxed later.
Beneficiaries, titling and intentions for what happens after you.
Legacy & estateRetirement accounts left behind at former employers.
RolloversAn illustration
What competing priorities look like.
A simple example
A household earning about $100,000 a year:
- roughly one month of expenses in savings
- a workplace retirement account with a balance building steadily
- a mortgage with more than twenty years remaining
- life insurance provided through one employer only
- two children, with college roughly eight and eleven years away
Every one of those is normal. Reviewed together, three questions appear at once: should the next dollar strengthen emergency savings, increase retirement contributions, or address the coverage that disappears if that job does? An analysis does not answer that for everyone — it puts the trade-off in front of you so the choice is deliberate.
Hypothetical and for illustration only. Not a projection, recommendation or promise of results.
Common mistakes
What tends to get missed.
Rate of return gets the attention while cash flow, coverage and taxes go unexamined.
A plan that assumes uninterrupted income is only a plan while income continues.
Designations set years ago may no longer match the family you have now.
Retirement accounts at former employers often sit unreviewed for a decade.
A balance and a spendable amount are not the same number.
Retirement income is a plan, not an automatic outcome of saving.
Questions to ask yourself
- If income paused tomorrow, how many months could current savings cover?
- Do I know what my retirement accounts might produce as monthly income?
- Would my family's expenses be covered if something happened to me?
- When did I last check the beneficiaries on every account?
- How much of my future retirement income will be taxable?
- Has anything changed in my life since these decisions were made?
- If I could fix one financial thing this year, do I know which one matters most?
Most people have 2 of these 4 handled. Let’s find out which two.
Things people don’t realize until Finn asks.
A beneficiary from a decade ago
An account nobody’s checked on in a while
A goal that quietly changed
None of these show up on a bank statement. That’s the point.
How this fits your Financial 360°
The starting point, not the destination.
The analysis exists to identify which areas deserve deeper attention first. What it uncovers determines which conversation is worth having next — retirement income, protection, old accounts or legacy — rather than starting with a product and working backwards.
Your next step
Start Your Financial 360° Review
Finn asks nine short questions. No account numbers, no balances, no spreadsheets.